Booting to modern UI is only one of its little annoyances. The fact they have hidden things like control panel is a far worse sin.
The good news is that learning some keyboard shortcuts make it much more tolerable. win+I for example.

I only bought Windows 8 because it was £25 and you could turn off the start screen. It's OK, I've gotten used to it - but I don't really care all that much. Sticking with 7 would have been just dandy too.

8.1 sounds an awful lot like Windows 7

__________________Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes; after that, who cares?! He's a mile away and you've got his shoes!

The fact they have hidden things like control panel is a far worse sin.

Hidden? If you're using desktop, you can right click the bottom left corner and select control panel

That's not hidden at all
Also, I did not know that.

Seriously though when I first booted the thing up I couldn't even find the shutdown menu. Took me a few mins to figure it out. Now I just use shortcuts for everything I can.

EDIT: Windows 8 is on my HTPC, not my desktop. Like Spreadie I got it because it was £25. Well that and it boots in the time it takes me to turn it on, pickup the keyboard and sit down.
I'm saying it boots fast.

There are a few nags about windows 8 which I would love to get changed. This is one of them (lucky for us, there are some hacks that brings back the old way of doing things). But in the end this should not even be needed at all, if they listen to the users.

If I was the leader of window 8, I would have build in a 'touch device' detection that only shows all touch related items (like the start screen) to the users of touch devices. And straight to desktop if you do not have a touch device.

The second thing I would change is the async copying off files from one drive to others. If you copy, lets say, ten 1gb files to another drive the copy process slows down to a halt. Only pausing some files will make it faster. It should by copied one after another it makes it that much faster.

The third thing I would change is showing the program folder content, it is impossible to find installed programmes.

Booting to modern UI is only one of its little annoyances. The fact they have hidden things like control panel is a far worse sin.
The good news is that learning some keyboard shortcuts make it much more tolerable. win+I for example.

Then there is the fact that you have settings in two places now.

Safe mode is very difficult to get into, especially if you cant boot normally to use msconfig.

It's insists on using metro apps by default, even if you are in desktop!

Installing unsigned drivers is horrible unless you always run it in 'Test mode', which breaks the metro
apps if you even wanted them.

There is no way of white listing UAC prompts, But then again there wasn't in 7 either.

Looked at a Win8 laptop with my wife last week.
It was non-touch, as many are.
She didn't have a clue where to click, moving the mouse around all kinds of stuff would start to pop up. turned out she was making mouse gestures, without realising it.

It should come with a tutorial. It's not that change is bad, but unexplained change just isn't intuitive.

Booting to modern UI is only one of its little annoyances. The fact they have hidden things like control panel is a far worse sin.
The good news is that learning some keyboard shortcuts make it much more tolerable. win+I for example.

I have Win 8 set to boot straight to desktop. Control panel = win key + type "cont..." same as Win 7.

PC sales are falling and windows 8 (in it's current form) is contributing to that.

Yeah, that's why Apple desktop and laptop PC's are declining as well. Actually Lenovo is still doing very well, and not just because they offer a Windows 7 install option. Why? Good after sales service, and it does not produce plastic crap. Something Microsoft has been criticising OEMs for a bit lately.

Ironically Windows 8 runs so lean that it makes old hardware perform as new. Perhaps that is another reason why people are not upgrading --they don't have to. And in times of austerity that is pretty darn handy.

As for Control Panel, once it is running right-click on its icon in the taskbar and select: "Pin to taskbar". Presto.

I love Windows 8 and yes I love the Modern UI, I find using Windows 7 start menu a major step backwards.

We have found in an enterprise environment there is less training issues with 8 and the modern UI that Windows 7.

Also someone commented "Mobile? Did they bring in something genuinely new? - NO" I think they did, the people hub/app is brilliant, using iphone is rubbish now having to swap apps to check FB. Twitter, SMS etc, I am going to regret having to give my 920 back to work when I leave and go back to my iPhone as I find the Windows Phone OS to be utterly brilliant, much slicker and faster than iOS which is frankly never changed since version 1, and Android which is a bug ridden fragmented mess

I love Windows 8 and yes I love the Modern UI, I find using Windows 7 start menu a major step backwards.

We have found in an enterprise environment there is less training issues with 8 and the modern UI that Windows 7.

Also someone commented "Mobile? Did they bring in something genuinely new? - NO" I think they did, the people hub/app is brilliant, using iphone is rubbish now having to swap apps to check FB. Twitter, SMS etc, I am going to regret having to give my 920 back to work when I leave and go back to my iPhone as I find the Windows Phone OS to be utterly brilliant, much slicker and faster than iOS which is frankly never changed since version 1, and Android which is a bug ridden fragmented mess

And let's not forget Live Tiles. I looked at the new HTC One this weekend. The phone itself is beautiful --the sexiest thing to come out since the iPhone 4. But the latest Android JB OS is confusing. It looks great, polished even, but it's a mess (HTC's own version of Live Tiles on the home screen makes it worse). It just lacks the clear overview and smooth navigating elegance of WP8.

I don't think anyone is denying 8 works well on mobile platforms, but as this news snippet points out 8 does not work so well for non touch enabled devices or when using a mouse+keyboard.
As has been said before, forcing your users into working a specific way probably isn't a good idea.